I only ask as Safeway is biting the big one here since Sobey's took over, they recently even closed a store which is nearly unheard of. Safeway is the dominate player around these parts, Co-op if your over 75 and don't have many taste buds left.

Essentially Safeway's are starting to resemble Target stores these days.

I only ask as Safeway is biting the big one here since Sobey's took over, they recently even closed a store which is nearly unheard of. Safeway is the dominate player around these parts, Co-op if your over 75 and don't have many taste buds left.

Essentially Safeway's are starting to resemble Target stores these days.

There is a story in the most recent Globe and Mail Report on Business magazine about this very issue:

Thanks I will check it out at work since they are subscribers.. It has gotten pretty darn bad out here, however I must say I certainly did less shopping at Thrifty's once Sobeys took over. Lots of products I use to enjoy, simply disappeared however it is not like their take over of Safeway has been.

Save On Foods gets nearly all my business now, Safeway gets the odd thing only because there is 3 of them in a 5 minute drive radius.

It's funny that it took a purchase of the scale of Canada Safeway to expose Sobeys' long-standing lack of competence, when it isn't even the biggest deal the company has ever made.

The one thing Sobeys is good at is acquiring chains with great reputations and then using those reputations as a crutch. The core Sobeys business with roots in Atlantic Canada has always been poorly run. So you could in fact argue that Sobeys has only managed to exist for so long in its form because of acquisitions. Any other business of this size probably would have failed if it didn't have the property portfolio of Sobeys' parent company.

Oshawa Group stores were arguably run much better prior to Sobeys' acquisition – which tripled Sobeys' size and gave them the Compliments in-house brand.

Thrifty Foods was arguably in much better shape before being bought by Sobeys. (In fact, I'd say the only reason Thrifty's hasn't gone downhill at the speed and scale of Safeway is that it's been run as a separate business unit since Sobeys bought it in 2007.)

And now, with Safeway, it's the same thing. No amount of free Jamie Oliver knife sets won by collecting stamps in a booklet is going to hide the fact that customers are not happy with the changes.